of the people. Many live in Reykjavik, and they
are against it if we move a stone here', he said,
pinching his fingers together as if holding one.
"But they live in concrete and asphalt. They
want to come here in their Jeeps and have a look
at the beautiful nature and the people too. And
the people must be few and the more strange
the better," he said, shaking his bowed head.
This clash of ideals can be traced to the early
20th century, when Iceland was still poor as dirt
and romantic poetry was being written about the
harnessing of the waterfalls as the future of Ice
land. During and after World War II, the occupa
tion by thousands of British and then American
soldiers led to a massive influx of foreign capi
tal and an investment in some fishing trawlers,
which boosted the economy for a while. Then
over time the fish stocks declined, the herring
disappeared, and Iceland became poor again.
By the mid- 1960s, according to Styrmir Gun
narsson, the snowy-haired editor of Reykjavik's
leading daily, Morgunbladid,the mood of the
country was shifting back to the idea of becom
ing well-off "by using waterfalls to produce elec
tricity and also by having aluminum factories."
So decade after decade, driven by a desire to
build a leg other than fish for Iceland to stand
on-and "inspired by the idealism of it" and
by the poetry, Styrmir said-the society went
about creating an infrastructure. Government
agencies, ministries, academic departments,
financial institutions, engineering firms-all
in pursuit of what was thought of as a big and
beautiful idea. Then, over the past two decades,
the mood of the country again began to shift.
Little by little, Icelanders and eco-trekkers
from around the world started venturing into
the interior wilderness, he said, and a belated
awareness of what was there-"glaciers, black
sand, beautiful blue rivers"-began to take hold.
"As the population has traveled to these parts, all
get the same feeling: You shouldn't change it. No
power dams, no roads. It should be just as it is."
In the midst ofthis environmental awakening,
the opportunity with Alcoa stood as possibly
the last chance for many Icelanders to realize a
century-long industrial dream.
"They felt they were doing something good
for the nation;" Styrmir said.
Now that they're being depicted as environ
mental criminals, they're bewildered.
"They don't understand."
THE SKY IS FALLING
The months passed, and protests mounted. A
protest camp and a protest concert were held,
featuring Bjork, the waif rock chanteuse who
is currently Iceland's most famous export; up
wards of 10,000 people marched in downtown
Reykjavik days before the flooding of the reser
voir (the equivalent of ten million-plus people
showing up someplace in the U.S.); and state
television's Omar Ragnarsson, Iceland's most fa
mous reporter, a completely bald and preternat
urally energetic 67-year-old (known for flying
his Cessna to the sites of erupting volcanoes and
sleeping in his black Jeep when he had to, sur
viving on Cheerios and Coca-Cola), launched
a 20-foot white fiberglass boat he dubbed The
Ark into the reservoir, to collect samples of lost
vegetation and stone as it filled over the months
and to film the land as it was transformed.
Critics, meanwhile, picked away at Karahn
jikar's business plan and characterized it, in a
variety of ways, as crazy. The borrowed 1.5 billion
dollars, for instance, was to be paid off with rev
enue from Alcoa over the four-decade contract.
After that, Siggi, the power company spokesman,
predicted, the dam would be "a gold mine"-a
rosy forecast not shared by those who had started
to think twice about there being no direct return
for 40 years on such a huge investment.
And what about the geologic risks associated
with boring and blasting 45 miles oftunnels in a
country that was one big volcano? Siggi insisted
that the dam wasn't located in an earthquake
zone but nonetheless had been designed to
withstand heavy shocks, and he likened all the
ICELAND S POWER STRUGGLE 83